Sunday, 7 November 2010

Finally, just for the record, I wanted to add the final in the series of VNEB exhibition boards. There is so much going on locally that it's difficult to keep up! These boards mostly show Wandsworth Council's outlines on the VNEB, which is importance since the majority of the VNEB falls on their patch. In my view, the boards aren't quite as useful as the ones that Lambeth Council supplied on account of the fact that they don't summarise all of the buildings that have been granted planning permission to date. Maybe there are too many to list (or they've not yet been declared), but without an idea of that, it's difficult to imagine the volume of housing and commercial space that will hit the area:

This board clearly outlines the scale of the development. 16,000 new homes means the arrival of a vast number of new residents. I fail to see how 20,000 - 25,000 new jobs will be created when industrial space is being reduced, but perhaps we'll all be surprised:

Note the mention of the "linear park", linking Vauxhall to Battersea. This will not provide adequate green space given the likely population density, even once the parks at Spring Gardens and Vauxhall have been taking into account:

The additional 800 primary school aged children will be catered for by /one/ primary school. Goodness knows whether the other primary schools in the locality can be expanded to meet demand. The 600 secondary school aged pupils will presumably have to be placed in existing schools. I'm not sure whether a school feasibility study has been completed, but this /sounds/ a tad unrealistic even to my unknowledgable ears. Battersea gets a library. Vauxhall probably won't (but then, libraries aren't really in vogue at the moment, are they?):

Transport. One of my favourite topics! This poster indicates improved bus services, new bus routes and increased bus frequency. It also shows enhanced railway stations (but doesn't mention enhanced services) so this probably just means the stations will get a make over (see here for Vauxhall rail station refurbishment). Cyclists are mentioned here in terms of "better provision", but it doesn't clearly outline cycle lanes or segregated cycle paths on roads or anything like that. There's mention of the proposed Northern line tube to Battersea, with an added station at Nine Elms (my favourite option, but it probably wouldn't do much to relieve congestion Kennington tube station). However, I think the huge cost of this project will eventually mean that the area will get a tram (which is one of the proposed options in the giant VNEB consultation document). I suppose another option might be to add a new National Rail station between Queenstown and Vauxhall, but looking at the map, this would probably be too far from the power station to meet the new residents' needs:

Here's a model, which I think illustrates how nasty and oversized the new St George tower will look. The architecture is not even particularly imaginative, just a round tall tower. This model is not illustrative of all of the buildings planned for Vauxhall. For some reason, some of these have been missed off. The orange line on the plan is the new proposed tube route:

Just for the record, here are the last few signs up at the exhibition, and completes this rather long and tedious set of plans and photos in the VNEB series.

Part 1 (Ballymore section) of VNEB exhibition is here.
Part 2 (Lambeth Council section) of VNEB exhibition is here.
Part 3 (Tideway Wharf section) of VNEB exhibition is here.
Part 4 (Sainsbury's Towers section) of VNEB exhibition is here.